by Wayne Smith
Smartphone Search Intent Algorithm
The algorithm for smartphone user intent is at is heart fairly basic; The user is searching from his smartphone, does the website display properly on a smart phone? Yes or No? Are navigation elements usable on a touch screen where the typical finger size is 50 pixels? Yes or no. This may be an opportune point to ask the question, is user intent the intent of the user or the intent of search? It is clear that Google wants to present the user with an ideal experiance for using Google's search, but from a legalistic or truthful point of view the intent of the user is intangible. Intangible or not the algorithms exist to present the experiance Google wants to present and SEO needs to take them into account.
Beyond the basic algorithm test, how fast does the page load over a slower mobile connection? Which is a value that can be used to refine search. And, is there an AMP version of the page which is faster or easier to use on a small screen?
User learnable considerations: Does the user use his phone mostly to find local search results? Does the user prefer pages with an audio option on their smart phone?
Schema exists to unambiguously add an audio version of the page to a website; However, audio is not a factor at this time for mobile search, or that is to say I've yet to discover how to inform Google of an intent to get the audio version option to be promoted on the results pages.